Truly living polymerization, i.e., truly terminationless and chain transferless polymerizations, are a most desirable objective of the synthetic polymer chemist. If the rates of both termination and chain transfer are zero, R.sub.t =R.sub.tr =0, and the rate of initiation is larger than that of propagation R.sub.i &gt;R.sub.p, polymer molecule weights are determined by the ratio [M]/[I] (i.e., monomer over initiator concentrations) and M.sub.w /M.sub.n will be reasonably small. If R.sub.i is instantaneous and/or R.sub.i &gt;&gt;R.sub.p, then M.sub.w /M.sub.n .perspectiveto.1.0. Living polymerizations are not only of scientific interest, but also of great commercial consequence, and several industrial processes are based on living systems, e.g., cis-1,4-polybutadiene, triblock copolymers of styrene-butadiene/styrene, polytetrahydrofuran, but these are not carbocationic polymerization processes.